Two South Korean marines guarding an island near the West Sea demarcation line that has been the site of several inter-Korean incidents in recent years last Friday mistakenly shot their K-2 rifles at a Korean civilian airliner traveling from Chengdu with 119 passengers on board that was making a final approach for landing at Incheon International Airport. The plane was too far away to be in danger, but the incident drew a public apology from the ROK Ministry of National Defense and a request to South Korean authorities to ensure air safety from the PRC Foreign Ministry spokesperson. Setting aside the mildly unsettling fact that I flew out of Incheon the following day, the incident illustrates the dangers of accidental conflict that accompany heightened tensions following the breakdown of inter-Korean talks following last year’s military incidents between the two Koreas.

The incident highlights the dilemma that the government of the Republic of Korea faces regarding how to calibrate an effective response to North Korean provocations without inadvertently contributing to heightened tension. South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin has repeatedly stated that South Korea would surely respond to North Korean provocations and prominent recommendations by a South Korean civilian-led Commission for National Security Review released last December has advocated a revised policy of “proactive deterrence” under which South Korea has a right to self-defense, including preemption, in the event of a North Korean attack. Revised rules of engagement designed to equip frontline soldiers with the tools necessary to respond rapidly and lethally to future North Korean aggression also carry with them enhanced risk that a field-level response to a perceived North Korean threat could result in unintentional escalation, regardless of the decisions or desires of the commander-in-chief.

The Lee Myung-Bak administration has shown impressive maturity and restraint in its responses to last year’s North Korean provocations, but opinion polls taken following the latest incident last December reveal understandable South Korean public frustration with what was perceived as an inadequate South Korean military response, a factor that reduces the political margin for restraint when the next inter-Korean incident occurs. South Korea’s self-restraint has earned high trust from Washington, but U.S. officials and U.S. Forces Korea commanders on the ground have continued to show concern that the current situation carries with it inherent and needless risks of escalation that may not be easily controlled.

In fact, the threat of escalation to civilian aviation at Incheon International Airport is a clear example of the vulnerability and costs that South Korea might incur if an inter-Korean incident were to expand to involve surface-to-air or air-to-ground components. The most tragic outcome of heightened inter-Korean tensions would be the prospect of accidental self-inflicted damage to South Korean assets or lives that might result from ‘friendly fire’ under loosened rules of engagement delegated to lower levels. South Korean capacity to deter the North is being improved by strengthening capabilities to defend the vulnerabilities of islands within North Korean artillery range, but when it comes to loosened rules of engagement, the potential unintended consequences of misjudgment suggest that a wiser approach than “proactive deterrence” may still be “better safe than sorry.”

This piece was originally published on the Council on Foreign Relations blog Asia Unbound.

Scott Snyder directs The Asia Foundation’s Center for U.S.-Korea Policy. He can be reached at ssnyder@asiafound-dc.org.

In an interview with the Korea Herald earlier this year, Hur Dong-Soo, CEO of Korea’s GS Caltex, called his company’s investments in heavy-oil upgrading facilities a “green growth business.” As the phrase “green growth” becomes ever more common – now used in reference to everything from solar panel exports to a stimulus-backed cure-all for ailing national economies – such claims beg the question, what does green growth really mean?

Korea is striving to meet the green growth vision that President Lee Myung-bak first announced in August of 2008. He has received several international awards for his environmental leadership. But some ask, where does Korea’s green growth strategy stand now?

Is it a strategy for cashing in on the growing global demand for clean energy products, like wind turbines and smart grid components?  Is it the goal to derive more power from renewable sources?  Or, is it investing in technology to meet the demand for cleaner-burning petroleum products, as GS Caltex is doing?

According to a new report from UC Berkeley and the Denmark-based Green Growth Leaders Council, the answer may be all of the above. The Council, which includes Dr. Young Soo-gil, Chairman of Korea’s Presidential Committee on Green Growth, met for the first time on April 13 to consider the report’s findings. After reviewing the existing literature, the report authors found six different definitions of green growth and three separate policy debates about it, each with different ambitions. These range from the proposal that reducing greenhouse gas emissions can be compatible with economic growth, to the more ambitious notion that investments in low-carbon technology can drive job growth, and finally, to the idea that green investments can spur an entirely new “green industrial revolution.”

Korea is striving for all three of these goals under the green growth vision that President Lee Myung-bak first announced in August of 2008. He pledged to spend 107 trillion won (US$97 billion), which amounts to 2 percent of annual GDP, in pursuit of green growth objectives between 2009 and 2013. Since then, he has received several international awards for his environmental leadership. Where does Korea’s green growth strategy stand now?

There is evidence of success and difficulties. Green growth has served as a basis for new bilateral partnerships and a public relations platform for Korean efforts to bolster the country’s global image. The Seoul-based Global Green Growth Institute is up and running, with projects underway in three countries. Korea is building a comprehensive smart grid test-bed on Jeju Island, with a view to becoming the first country with a nationwide smart grid by 2030. The Framework Act on Low Carbon Green Growth has become law, establishing the legal foundation for the Lee Administration to move the strategy forward.

But there are limits to how far, how fast, and how easily the government can push forward to achieve its aims.

First, how far can the government go?  Cap and trade remains a tough sell in Korea. It is central to the government’s goal of reducing the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent below “business as usual” (BAU) levels by 2020, something it is not obligated to do under the Kyoto Protocol (The proposed goal would mean a reduction of 4 percent below 2005 levels in the present BAU scenario, but not necessarily so if the BAU is revised). Representing the industry view, Lee Dong-keun, Executive Chairman of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told reporters that “Forcing firms to buy carbon permits to cover their emissions output will surely bring competitive disadvantage to our industrial edge.”  South Korean business groups cite two other factors in their opposition:  the uncertain outcome of global climate change negotiations; and the unlikely prospects for implementation of cap and trade systems in other advanced economies, like the United States and Japan. Earlier this year, the government acquiesced to private sector pressure when it revised draft legislation to delay implementation of cap and trade for two years to 2015.

Second, how fast can the government achieve its green growth goals?  Along with green growth, Korea is aggressively pursuing new sources of fossil fuels, which it will need to power its economy for quite some time. President Lee’s recent trip to the United Arab Emirates underscores this reality. While there, he accepted the Zayed Prize for Global Environmental Leadership and secured an oil field development deal worth 110 trillion won (US$100 billion) for Korea. President Lee is seeking to achieve a 20 percent energy self-sufficiency ratio in oil and gas for Korea during his term. Green growth will play out over a much longer timeframe.

Third, how easy will it be to marshal public and private sector resources toward common goals?  Implementation of Korea’s green growth strategy is diffused among many players who view their role in green growth through different lenses. Given the scope and ambition of President Lee’s strategy, this is not surprising; green growth policies affect the work of many government ministries and research institutes. This is necessary to implement such a sweeping strategy, but it also presents an obstacle to clarity about what green growth really means.

Finally, what are the prospects for U.S.-ROK cooperation on green growth?  There are competitive and cooperative forces at play. In a March hearing before the Senate Energy Committee, Korea was mentioned in the competitive context of a clean energy technology “race.” Both countries have been clear that they are seeking to secure leadership positions in the global market for these technologies. The U.S. Department of Energy’s new Strategic Plan reinforces this goal. President Lee recently touted his country’s seven-fold increase in exports of new and renewable energy, saying that Korea’s solar and wind industries will be nurtured as the semiconductor and shipbuilding industries once were as part of South Korea’s economic development strategy. Further, in U.S. forums like the Senate hearing, Korea is often overshadowed by China as a strategic focus of cooperation.

However, the Department of Energy’s new “Quadrennial Technology Review” (QTR) may bode well for U.S.-ROK cooperation by shedding light on the strategic direction for U.S. energy transformation at the federal level. The QTR will provide a framework for meeting U.S. energy challenges and, in the words of QTR Director Dr. Steven Koonin, consider “how the many different kinds of organizations that influence energy innovation and transformation can better work together.” While there is no U.S. equivalent to Korea’s Presidential Committee on Green Growth, the QTR might serve as a proxy, at least in the realm of energy technology innovation. In addition, Korea’s push to establish itself at the center of new multilateral organizations, such as the International Smart Grid Action Network, may present new avenues for cooperation.

The Berkeley report cautioned that green growth “may be real and achievable, but hardly generalizable and inevitable.”  It also cast doubt on the notion that the transition to a low-carbon economy can drive GDP growth directly. Two and a half years into President Lee’s strategy, green growth has yet to fully live up to its name. But its place in the policymaker’s vernacular seems assured as Korea pushes forward on this work-in-progress idea.

This article was originally published in the Center for U.S.-Korea Policy’s June newsletter.

The Center will address South Korea’s green growth strategy at a conference co-hosted with the Korea Economic Institute in Washington, D.C., on June 23, featuring a keynote speech by Dr. Young Soo-gil, chairman of the South Korean Presidential Committee on Green Growth.

Jill Kosch O’Donnell reports regularly on developments in South Korea’s green growth strategy for the Center for U.S.-Korea Policy. She can be reached at jillkosch@hotmail.com. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the individual author and not those of The Asia Foundation.

North Korea’s National Defense Commission yesterday released a rare public statement on inter-Korean relations in response to Lee Myung-Bak’s May 9 Berlin speech inviting Kim Jong Il to attend next year’s Nuclear Security Summit. The statement came only days after Kim Jong Il’s return from last week’s visit to China where he met with PRC President Hu Jintao, and it responds to the May 19 revelation by South Korea’s Blue House spokesperson that secret contacts had been made with North Korean counterparts in advance of Lee’s Berlin invitation. The North Korean statement confirmed that the contacts had occurred and that the South Korean side had actually proposed three summit meetings, including meetings in Panmunjom and Pyongyang prior to a meeting at the March 2012 Nuclear Security Summit, but it effectively derails prospects for a stable inter-Korean relationship over the next eighteen months.

The statement concluded with a three-point ultimatum: 1) “Our army and people will no longer deal with the Lee Myung-Bak gang of traitors. 2) We will enter a nationwide, full-scale offensive to put an end to the anti-Republic confrontation maneuvers of the Lee Myung-Bak gang of traitors. 3) Our army and people will take practical actions for the present to deal with the confrontation racket by the gang of traitors.”

The statement, while not surprising, sets the stage for renewed tensions and raises a number of important questions regarding how to manage continued inter-Korean tensions:

• North Korea’s announcement of its intention to wait out the Lee Myung-Bak administration begs the question of whether Lee’s successor will pursue a revised North Korea policy in 2013. Although the Lee administration’s policy has strong public support, it has arguably left South Korea vulnerable to North Korean provocations. Presumably, North Korean actions going forward will be calculated in part to shape the South Korean domestic debate so as to encourage South Korea to return to a more progressive policy toward the North. But North Korea’s ability to manipulate South Korean domestic politics has historically been poor. Renewed provocation is one way for North Korea to show the ineffectiveness of the Lee administration’s policy, but it also pushes the South Korean public toward a tougher stance against North Korea.
• The prospect of renewed North Korean provocations, for instance, in response to “anti-republic confrontation maneuvers” or operations such as balloon drops to disseminate information critical of the North Korean regime, is particularly unwelcome given the fact that all of North Korea’s neighbors including China are internally focused on their own internal political transitions. This circumstance makes the task of managing potential North Korean crises more difficult.
• Following Kim Jong Il’s visit to Beijing on May 20-26, the PRC government cannot be happy since the statement rejects China’s counsel to renew dialogue and lower tensions. Maintenance of a tense inter-Korean relationship can be a way for North Korea to underscore dissatisfaction with China for failure to fully meet North Korean economic demands and expectations. Higher inter-Korean tensions serve to ensure that China’s economic priorities in managing relations with the North are focused on stability rather than reform.
• North Korea’s food situation may be exacerbated by heightened tensions, but it also constrains the political space for the international community to be able to provide food assistance to North Korea. Even if North Korea faces worsening conditions, the ability to mobilize resources to feed hungry North Koreans will be constrained by a tense political environment. This may play into the hands of a political leadership that thrives on opaqueness and external threats as a means by which to strengthen its political control.

South Korea has responded to the North Korean statement thus far by reiterating a desire for dialogue. North Korea’s neighbors have backed the idea that inter-Korean dialogue constitutes the threshold for North Korea to expand its international engagement. But it is the prospect of responding to renewed North Korean provocations and the potential for North Korean miscalculation resulting from its continued isolation that may constitute a greater test for South Korea, North Korea’s neighbors, and the U.S.-ROK alliance.

This piece was originally published on the Council on Foreign Relations blog Asia Unbound.

Scott Snyder directs The Asia Foundation’s Center for U.S.-Korea Policy. He can be reached at ssnyder@asiafound-dc.org.

At a State Department briefing earlier this week, the spokesman stated that U.S. Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea Ambassador Robert King may be tasked to lead a food assessment mission to North Korea. This announcement comes following a round of consultations led by Ambassador Stephen Bosworth last week in South Korea to manage differences on the issue, since United States sees food assistance as an issue separate from politics while the South Korean government sees food assistance as a form of leverage by which to bring North Korea back to the negotiating table. The consultations resulted in begrudging South Korean government support (or at least the absence of objections to) the U.S. decision to send an assessment team to North Korea.

The decision to send a U.S. food assessment mission itself does not mean that the United States will actually decide to give food aid to North Korea, but it does open the door to that possibility. A major obstacle remains the outstanding issues between the United States and North Korea that must be addressed if food assistance is to be approved, including the unmonitored disposition of food aid that was disbursed in North Korea after the departure of monitors at the time of North Korea’s decision to prematurely end provision of food assistance in March of 2009.

The most interesting aspect of the announcement is the possibility that U.S. Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, Ambassador Robert King, will lead the mission. This new wrinkle is intriguing for a variety of reasons:

• North Korea has traditionally not recognized human rights issues as a legitimate issue for discussion between the United States and North Korea, but despite this circumstance appears to have accepted Ambassador King as the leader of the delegation. One factor that may have made this decision easier in Pyongyang is that Ambassador King is already a known quantity to the North Koreans, having visited the country with his former boss, Congressman Tom Lantos, as chief of staff to Lantos in 2005. The existence of a prior relationship between King and the North Koreans and the framing of the mission as primarily focused on humanitarian aid probably facilitated North Korean acceptance.
• Ambassador King’s leadership of the delegation provides a political inoculation to criticism of the Obama administration for moving forward in its assessment of conditions in North Korea, regardless of the outcome of the mission, and for any potential provision of food assistance to North Korea, given his prior relationships and good standing with Capitol Hill. Ambassador King should serve as an effective interlocutor and advocate on this issue precisely because he enjoys relationships on the Hill that will make him an effective advocate of the administration’s decision, especially given that the position of Ambassador for North Korean Human Rights was a creation of Congress through the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004, so in this sense, Ambassador King owes his role and position to the decision of the U.S. Congress. However, some might argue that by appointing a political appointee to lead the assessment, the Obama administration has unnecessarily given a political tinge to what might otherwise have been seen as a purely technical delegation.
• Ambassador King’s leadership of the mission sends the signal that the United States frames the food issue in a humanitarian and human rights context, presumably strengthening the demarcation between the humanitarian mission and any potential political developments in the U.S.-DPRK relationship. However, since North Korea sees U.S. decisions on humanitarian aid through a political lens, the food aid assessment might be treated in Pyongyang as a political signal that the Obama administration might finally be open to a broader political dialogue with North Korea. Ambassador King will want to take care to limit the scope of his dialogue to humanitarian issues if the United States truly wants to separate humanitarian from political issues. South Korea will want to see the purpose of the humanitarian mission separated clearly from spillover into politics, while North Korea may see humanitarian assistance dialogue as an early indicator that the U.S. government may be willing to broaden the scope of high-level bilateral interaction to include political dialogue.
• Ambassador King’s role and title as Special Envoy on Human Rights Issues suggests that he will be expected to raise a myriad of non-humanitarian human rights concerns with North Korea on topics that North Korea has historically denied as having either a factual basis or having legitimacy as part of the U.S.-DPRK diplomatic relationship. Among the issues that have recently gained traction among human rights NGOs, the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea has just released a report on North Korea’s involvement in international abductions and the Korean War Abduction Research Institute has stepped up lobbying in Seoul and Washington to have the unresolved armistice issue of North Korea’s abductions of South Korean citizens from the Korean War reintroduced as a current issue that must be resolved.

As mentioned in my previous post, a substantive issue that has emerged on the basis of previous assessments by U.S. NGOs and the UN World Food Programme is the role of the markets versus North Korea’s public distribution system, through which North Korean government authorizes preferred institutions eligible to receive international aid. To address this issue, the WFP and others have discussed the possibility of “monitoring the markets” as part of the regime that North Korea would have to accept as part of a new round of food assistance.

However, North Korean agreements to monitor the markets will not go far enough as elements of any new program for distributing food aid to North Korea. In the absence of inability to independently determine greatest need, the best option for saving lives in North Korea is to stabilize grain prices through the market mechanism through subsidies that lower market prices. The introduction of external assistance through the market mechanism would influence existing suppliers of grain, who currently have a monopoly on supply and the capacity to influence market availability and perceptions of supply and demand to maximize their own profits. The problem is that such a program would require a greater level of intrusiveness into North Korean markets than North Korea is likely to be willing to accept at this time. Monitoring the markets will provide more detailed information regarding domestic prices inside North Korea, but will not fundamentally decrease the dependence of the entire aid monitoring project on the North Korean government’s listing of priorities.

This piece was originally published on the Council on Foreign Relations blog Asia Unbound.

Scott Snyder directs The Asia Foundation’s Center for U.S.-Korea Policy. He can be reached at ssnyder@asiafound-dc.org.

There has been a protracted debate over whether the United States should give food assistance in response to North Korea’s appeals for assistance from earlier this year, with an exchange between Stephan Haggard and Lee Jong Cheol as the most recent example. Both U.S. Institute of Peace and the Heritage Foundation have also sponsored programs on the subject within the last week.

The overall debate is an extension of one that began over fifteen years ago with the initial entry of international organizations in response to North Korea’s famine of the mid-1990s, and it essentially revolves around two characteristics of humanitarian response to North Korea that are distinctive from other complex humanitarian emergencies: 1) most humanitarian interventions occur in the context of a breakdown of political authority, but international aid workers must work with North Korean political authorities to meet humanitarian needs, and 2) North Korea’s need is a function of system failure, but it is also a potential source of revenue that might assist in sustaining that system. Two recent food assessment missions by international and private humanitarian agencies (a rapid food security assessment by U.S. NGOs in February and another by the UN World Food Program in March) have documented the existence of growing humanitarian need in North Korea. How should the United States and the international community respond?

In my view, there are three points that that have not drawn sufficient attention:

1. While it is possible to document humanitarian need inside North Korea, North Korean authorities have not allowed international agencies to independently identify and respond to greatest need inside North Korea. This circumstance heightens the moral hazard of providing food aid to North Korea because international agencies must work with North Korean authorities to deliver assistance, and provision of assistance through North Korea’s public distribution system is an indirect affirmation of North Korean leadership and system priorities. If the United States provides assistance, it must either do so on the basis of an independent determination of greatest need or provide non-fungible goods that minimize reliance on North Korea’s public distribution system.
2. Even if Americans operate by the Reagan-era maxim that “a hungry child knows no politics,” North Korean counterparts do not (nor have South Korean counterparts, a circumstance which opens the possibility for misunderstanding within the U.S.-ROK alliance). Given the U.S.-DPRK history of indirect linkage between humanitarian aid and political negotiations, the North Koreans may interpret a U.S. decision to provide humanitarian assistance as the first step toward the same kind of type of bargaining dynamic with North Korea that the Obama administration has thus far foresworn. If the United States provides food aid, it must be done in a manner that clearly separates humanitarian assistance from prospects for renewed political bargaining over the nuclear issue.
3. The two recent reports on North Korea’s food assistance provide an indirect affirmation by the North Korean government that the market must be a part of the solution to North Korea’s food problems. North Korea’s domestic production of food has remained stable, but its ability to procure assistance from outside sources has been constrained by rises in food prices. Both the rapid food security assessments report that North Korea’s food administration ministry had purchased 325,000 metric tons of food internationally in 2010, but would only manage to purchase 200,000 metric tons as a result of rising food prices. The UN WFP reports that the “import capacity of the DPRK in 2010/11 has been reduced as a result of reductions in export earnings, as well as higher international food and fuel prices.”

Another factor that has exacerbated need within North Korea is growing income inequality between the rich and poor. The Council’s independent task force on policy toward the Korean peninsula last year advocated the need for a market-based approach to humanitarian assistance. North Korea has opened the door to such an approach through its implicit admission that its current problems lie more with procurement than domestic production. The North Korean ban on sale of grain and efforts by North Korean distributors to ‘make the market’ despite the government’s ban serve to exacerbate need among the poorest North Koreans, and must be dealt with in the context of efforts to address North Korea’s humanitarian need.

During a February visit to Seoul, Ambassador Robert King spelled out three criteria for delivery of U.S. food aid to the North: 1) demonstrated need on the basis of in-country surveys, 2) a comparative evaluation of North Korea’s needs in the context of global need, and 3) a secure guarantee of monitoring of aid. These criteria are reasonable, but the one that is missing is that any provision of assistance within North Korea be market-based. This criterion will likely require a drastically different approach from the template upon which past food assistance has been provided, and it remains to be seen whether North Korean authorities would agree to such an approach. However, if North Korea’s implicit admission to recent assessment missions of the role of markets as part of the food equation can be used as an opening to address some of the systemic problems within the North Korean system, it is worthwhile to pursue a more active discussion of U.S. food aid to North Korea.

This piece was originally published on the Council on Foreign Relations blog Asia Unbound.

Scott Snyder directs The Asia Foundation’s Center for U.S.-Korea Policy. He can be reached at ssnyder@asiafound-dc.org.

NHK live broadcasts on the tsunami that swept coastal villages in Eastern Japan on March 11 were a shocking scene to the Korean people. Japan now confronts the aftermath of triple natural disasters – an earthquake of a record 9.0 magnitude, a devastating tsunami, and the threat of radioactive contamination –  that have left 11,417 dead, 16,273 missing, and more than 350,000 people struggling to survive at crowded shelters.

Following the daily progress of these unbearable natural disasters, Koreans moved quickly to help the Japanese. The Korean government’s decision to dispatch a rescue team within days of the crisis was the earliest action by any government. Korea has sent 53 tons of boric acid to help control the badly broken Fukushima nuclear plants, and on March 19, delivered 100 tons of water and 6,000 blankets for the Japanese in shelters.

The government was not the only helping hand. On March 12, the Chosun Daily initiated a movement for donations from Korean citizens, which drew more than 10,000 participants in a single day and led actions from other media and public organizations. The Korean Red Cross amassed 21.3 billion won ($19.6 million) in two weeks, the largest amount of voluntary donation at times of natural disasters both in and outside Korea. Myeongdong, the most well-known tourist spot for Japanese, displayed a banner saying “Cheer up, Japanese friends. We are always with you,” while the Korean Salvation Army appealed for charitable donations from passersby. Even the Korean comfort women, victims of Japanese colonialism who have demonstrated at the Japanese embassy every Wednesday for the past 19 years, observed a time for mourning and donated money for Japan on March 16. In three weeks, South Korean donations reportedly amounted to a total of 50 billion won ($46 million).

In an opinion survey conducted by YTN, JoongAng Daily, and the East Asia Institute in March, 76.4 percent of respondents supported the idea of collecting money for, and dispatching rescuers to, Japan. For Korea, where ordinary people have mixed feelings toward Japan because of historical and territorial controversies, this was a rare manifestation of friendly and embracing attitudes toward Japan. The vast majority of Koreans has shown deep sympathy toward the disaster stricken Japanese people, starting from elementary school students who have joined the voluntary donation effort. A high-ranking Korean diplomat in Japanese affairs has suggested that this unprecedented and virtually unanimous positive shift in attitudes toward Japan could be a new milestone for upgrading Korea-Japan relations. Another Japan specialist has called the response a paradigmatic shift in the Korean mindset. Japan’s March 11 earthquake and Korea’s subsequent civic initiative to help Japan could present a potential turning point for breaking the vicious cycle of repeated controversies.

But, South Korea’s heightened mood of friendship toward Japan and Japan’s own hardship did not discourage Japan’s Ministry of Education from promoting territorial awareness on Dokdo/Takeshima through its March 30 middle school textbook review, the result of which follows new teaching guidelines established in 2008. Reflecting a conservative shift in Japanese society, all 18 geography, civics, and history textbooks present the island as Japanese territory, with four arguing that Korea is illegally occupying Japan’s territory, and the proportion of textbooks containing Japan’s territorial claim increasing from 43 to 66 percent. The Japanese government’s handling of the issues galvanized the Korean public, for whom Dokdo/Takeshima is not a mere subject of territorial controversy, but also symbolizes the legacy of Japanese colonial rule as the first “territorial” concession to Japan in 1905.

Most Koreans find it deplorable that Japan could not avoid another territorial flare-up amid the South Korean government and public’s unprecedented friendly outreach toward Japan, an otherwise historic moment for the heightening of bilateral ties which can hardly be engineered by diplomatic efforts. Koreans received Japan’s posture with understandable frustration. In a DongA Ilbo survey on March 31, only 17.3 percent of respondents believed that Korean assistance for the Japanese earthquake would substantially contribute to upgrading the bilateral relationship; 43.3 percent saw Korean support of Japan as a temporary phenomenon; and 34.9 percent anticipated no major breakthrough in relations led by Korean initiative.

Although the Korean government has decided to separate the issue of humanitarian aid from the territorial controversy and abstain from raising political tensions, the confrontation highlighted the territorial issue as a continued constraint to cooperation with Japan. But, it is unlikely that Korea will link territorial controversies with other cooperative agendas. The United States, Japan, and South Korea are stepping up trilateral coordination, especially after the North Korean artillery attack on Yeonpyeong Island in November. On December 6, 2010, the foreign ministers of the three countries urged North Korea to cease its provocative behavior, abide by the terms of the 1953 Armistice Agreement, and take concrete steps to demonstrate a genuine commitment to complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization. The ministers also agreed to deal effectively with common security threats, including North Korean contingencies.

This tremendous natural disaster reminded both Korea and Japan of the critical need to  work together on nuclear safety in addition to ongoing efforts toward North Korean denuclearization and nonproliferation. When foreign ministers of South Korea, Japan and China met on March 19, 2011, they recognized the need to strengthen cooperation in the areas of disaster management and nuclear safety. Putting nuclear safety on the agenda of the 2012 Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul will present an important opportunity to enhance alliance cooperation among Korea, Japan, and the United States. Furthermore, the Great East Japan Earthquake elevated the need to undertake concerted efforts in dealing with other non-traditional security concerns in the region such as energy security, environmental challenges, and food safety.

Critically important to enhancing non-traditional security cooperation is the provision of public goods by maintaining peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region, which can be effectively secured by trilateral cooperation among the United States, Japan, and South Korea.

This article was originally published in The Asia Foundation’s Center for U.S.-Korea Policy April newsletter.

Cheol Hee Park is Associate Professor at Seoul National University.

I was a last-minute substitute speaker this week on the U.S.-South Korean nuclear relationship at the Carnegie Endowment’s 2011 Nuclear Policy Conference. (A podcast of the event is available here.) The focus of our panel on “U.S. Nuclear Cooperation: How and With Whom?” was on issues surrounding a new U.S.-ROK nuclear cooperation agreement to replace the current agreement that expires in 2014, and featured an excellent review by State’s Richard Stratford of nuclear cooperation agreements the United States will be negotiating with at least 17 countries by 2014.

The main focus of my presentation was on the challenges and pressures Korea poses as it negotiates a revised nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States in terms of its own perceived needs as a new exporter of nuclear plants. U.S. non-proliferation policies are in apparent conflict with the aspirations of the Korean industry to provide the full range of services, including enrichment and reprocessing, so as to maintain international competitiveness in this sector. This aspiration is also at odds with a Congressional desire to tighten restrictions contained in U.S. nuclear cooperation agreements with other countries, and raises some interesting questions about how long it is possible for the United States to sustain its role in shaping the parameters for nuclear activity in other states through its web of nuclear cooperation agreements. Fred McGoldrick last year provided an in-depth analysis of these challenges in a paper available here.

One positive step in dealing with these issues will be to promote greater responsibility among Koreans for safeguarding the nonproliferation regime, including the strengthening of Korean capacities and contributions to nonproliferation in proportion to the benefits Korea expects to gain as a nuclear plant exporter. In this respect, South Korean preparations to host the 2012 Nuclear Security Summit will stretch Korean bureaucrats precisely because the bulk of expertise on nuclear issues in South Korea is attracted to the industry side, with a limited set of career options up to now for those Koreans who want to work on nonproliferation. To handle such responsibilities, South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade needs to develop its own cadre of career professionals with deep technical expertise on nuclear issues.

One topic we didn’t get to in the panel is the impact of the Fukushima nuclear disaster on attitudes in South Korea. Despite some jittery reporting in the South Korean media and a nationwide order to conduct safety checks of South Korean reactors, I found surprisingly little urgency regarding these issues among foreign policy specialists with whom I spoke in Seoul. Liz Economy recently pointed out South Korea’s vulnerability to fallout from Chinese reactors, and South Korean media has reported that if South Korea plans for expansion from the current 21 plants to 34 plants by 2024, South Korea will have the greatest density of nuclear reactors to population anywhere in the world. The events in Japan should stimulate a more active nuclear policy debate in South Korea.

I would like to suggest two issues for starters. First, the Japanese disaster and response should catalyze a review of South Korea’s nuclear regulatory structure, in which the South Korean equivalent of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission reports to the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology rather than having a more autonomous role. In South Korean society, where there is already a web of tight personal connections in the nuclear field among academia, government, and business, the need for a more independent nuclear regulator is critical. Second, the Fukushima disaster has highlighted the vulnerability of pools as a location for long-term interim spent fuel storage, suggesting the need to move more quickly toward expanding dry cask storage facilities, a move that might also expand South Korean spent fuel storage capacity, which is projected to reach capacity by 2016. This does not solve South Korea’s spent fuel problem, but it would presumably make interim spent fuel storage safer while meeting South Korea’s immediate need for expanded storage capacity.

This piece was originally published on the Council on Foreign Relations blog Asia Unbound.

Scott Snyder directs The Asia Foundation’s Center for U.S.-Korea Policy. He can be reached at ssnyder@asiafound-dc.org.

Less than three months after North Korea’s shelling of South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island, North and South Korea opened preliminary, colonel-level talks yesterday to set an agenda and date for ministerial-level defense talks. However, the talks adjourned without reaching an agreement, raising questions about prospects for renewed diplomacy to address North Korea’s nuclear program. South Korea accepted inter-Korean Red Cross talks on humanitarian issues, but even those talks may be constrained by North Korea’s failure to take responsibility for past provocations against the South.

Both Koreas have reason to reinitiate inter-Korean dialogue, but the two sides appear to be talking past each other. North Korea has shifted from a policy of provocation to diplomatic charm offensive for the second time in two years because it needs to relieve food shortfalls and expand economic assistance from South Korea so as not to rely exclusively on China for its economic needs. South Korea faces international pressure to reengage in talks following the Hu-Obama joint call for renewed dialogue last month in Washington. It also faces domestic pressures from a South Korean public, which expects the administration of President Lee Myung-bak to retaliate strongly against North Korean provocations but is also concerned about a lack of progress in inter-Korean relations and is beginning to think about next year’s South Korean parliamentary and presidential elections.

Read the full report, originally published on the Council on Foreign Relations website.

Scott Snyder directs The Asia Foundation’s Center for U.S.-Korea Policy. He can be reached at ssnyder@asiafound-dc.org.

Both North and South Koreans appear to have had disproportionately high expectations in the run-up to last week’s Hu-Obama summit, judging from their reluctant willingness to edge toward tension reduction and dialogue following the November 23rd Yeonpyeong Island artillery shelling and high tensions surrounding South Korea’s live-fire exercises on December 20th. In anticipation of potential improvements in Sino-U.S. coordination, North Korea launched a diplomatic charm offensive during the first two weeks of January. South Korea finally responded shortly following the Hu-Obama summit with proposals for inter-Korean military talks and talks to address nuclear issues. The Sino-U.S. Joint Statement provided a push to the two Koreas by calling for “sincere and constructive inter-Korean dialogue” and by explicitly mentioning enriched uranium as an item that should be on the agenda of renewed Six Party Talks, but the joint statement also exposes clear limits to Sino-U.S. agreement on how to approach North Korea.

The Sino-U.S. Joint Statement fails to explicitly mention UN Security Council Resolutions 1718 and 1874, and does not explicitly reiterate the need for stepped up counter-proliferation and export control efforts focused on preventing the transfer of fissile material-related technologies or know-how. This is a significant omission, given that China’s role in implementing an effective counter-proliferation program toward North Korea is critical. The statement also failed to explicitly mention or attribute responsibility for “recent developments” that have heightened tension on the Korean peninsula. There is no indication of agreement on a further UN role in addressing tensions on the Korean peninsula. The statement does not explicitly define “necessary steps” that would enable a return to the Six Party Talks process, indirectly underscoring the absence of a viable jointly-agreed process for achieving the shared objective of denuclearizing the Korean peninsula.

This piece was originally published on the Council on Foreign Relations blog Asia Unbound.

Scott Snyder directs The Asia Foundation’s Center for U.S.-Korea Policy. He can be reached at ssnyder@asiafound-dc.org.

Recent turbulence on the Korean Peninsula raises several key questions: What is the best way to assure stability there? How can the U.S.-ROK alliance play its due role while still being perceived as a stabilizer by other stakeholders, and how can China positively interact with the two allies?

If China still feels that the “evidence” that the ROK-led investigation secured regarding the Cheonan’s sinking in March last year was not decisive enough to point to Pyongyang, the DPRK’s artillery barrage on Yeonpyeong should have perplexed Beijing. It would certainly be desirable if Seoul could exercise more restraint on its military drills in the waters that the DPRK has claimed, but the North’s shelling of Yeonpyeong is hardly acceptable at all.

There is a rationale that America, as the ROK’s staunch ally, would stand firmly in support of its ally. The U.S. exercised certain restraint in the wake of Cheonan by not sending an aircraft carrier to the West Sea/Yellow Sea. Washington could not sit idly by not dispatching the USS George Washington after the Yeonpyeong attack, as it would otherwise lose credibility among its allies and send a wrong message to North Korea that its aggressiveness could stand without being properly deterred.

Due to China-U.S. synergy, a second North Korean artillery barrage did not ensue after the ROK’s new round of exercises in December. A number of factors have apparently led to this: the U.S. demonstration of support for its ally, Presidents Hu and Obama’s telephone exchange, and China’s delivery of its firm will not to accept the DPRK’s excessive behavior (China’s People’s Daily (overseas edition), on December 21, 2010, featured a page-one article of mine to this effect).

Although China and the U.S. succeeded in containing adventurism last month, they may still grumble about each other. The U.S. might suspect that China is an interested party and unable to be impartial, while China’s top brass seems resentful, worrying that the U.S. carrier task force group is approaching too close to China.

Obviously both China and the U.S. share an interest in stabilizing the situation on the Korean peninsula and have collaborated at the highest levels to deescalate the confrontation. Nevertheless, China and the U.S. did not need to hedge against each other while collaborating. As long as stability serves their common interest, they can cooperate to assure that the inter-Korean relationship is managed in a more stable fashion. They could nurture the other’s action by demonstrating leadership in positively shaping the regional security environment.

As for the ROK’s military exercises, it is evident that as a sovereign state, the South is entitled to conduct defensive drills. However, it is crucial that its action is planned and perceived as defensive. In order to avoid being seen as too ambitious, such military exercises ought to be conducted farther from the border area, let alone in an area where sovereignty is disputed.

The South may believe that the waters adjacent to Yeonpyeong are naturally part of South Korea, especially since the UN Command made it so in 1953 and also since the DPRK might have accepted this two decades ago. However, the reality is the DPRK doesn’t accept this at the moment. There exists a dispute now over a past dispute that appeared to be “settled” in the early 1990s. The South may not want the “settled” dispute to be disputed again, but has to respect the new reality and exercise more caution. America, as the ROK’s protector, has a responsibility to both defend its ally and demand it to act very cautiously.

While China has a legal responsibility to protect the DPRK, it also has an obligation to assure its ally not to be aggressive. In fact, China has no responsibility to protect an aggressive “friend,” in which case the ally would not deserve protection as its aggressiveness would automatically free Beijing’s common defense obligation.

If both the U.S. and China would make their respective treaty rights and obligations crystal clear to the respective Koreas, they would not only follow the UN Charter and reassure their friends, but also forge their own mutual trust. Regrettably this does not seem to be the case. The U.S. does not appear to have clearly cautioned the ROK, while China might have not warned the DPRK of the consequences of provocation or escalation of a crisis which violates their treaty and undercuts China’s national interests.

In the case of Cheonan, even if China may not fully accept the “evidence” that the ROK has presented, there is still a collaborative approach to dealing with the introduction of U.S. naval vessels. It is true that the emergence of USS George Washington in the region did not bode well for China, but one must not forget that the purpose of its participation was not to coerce China in the first place. It was to deter the aggression that led to the Cheonan’s sinking, which coincided with China’s own interests.

To turn the Korean peninsula crisis into an opportunity, it is not inconceivable to “have both fish and bear’s paw at the same time,” as a Chinese idiom has stated. To prevent China from viewing U.S.-ROK naval drills as provocative, the U.S. and South Korea could invite China to join. Forging a China- U.S.-ROK trilateral naval exercise would carry great political symbolism and expand the international coalition to deter the aggression that has led to recent regional instability.

China may perceive such an invitation as a difficult political choice but less of a security threat. After all, China is the ROK’s “strategic partner” and is building a “positive, cooperative and comprehensive partnership” with America; it is not politically incorrect to work with the two partners for cooperative dissuasion of threats to regional stability. As the DPRK has claimed innocence from the Cheonan incident, there is even less political baggage if China would take this course. Meanwhile, such an invitation would make a U.S.-ROK military move politically less harmful in terms of relations with China, and would grant China some leverage to moderate its partners’ behavior cooperatively.

In sum, there exist better alternatives for dealing with Korean peninsula security that are mutually beneficial to all stakeholders. Common interests in regional stability could be well served if all players are able to turn the challenges into opportunities. The upcoming Sino-U.S. summit in Washington in January could help develop this sort of wisdom to narrow differences and deepen the space for cooperation.

This article was originally published in The Asia Foundation’s Center for U.S.-Korea Policy January newsletter.

Shen Dingli is professor and executive dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University, Shanghai.